XIEKE NEM of the week

Ancient Site Holds Cannibalism Clues Excavations of three 850-year-old pit

dwellings strewn with butchered human skeletons have yielded evidence of canni- balism in the prehistoric U.S. Southwest, according to a new report. The discover- ies include the first example ever of what some scientists regard as a crucial sign of past cannibalism: a fossilized piece of hu- man feces, also known as a coprolite, that contains the chemical residue of hu- man flesh.

During a period of intense warfare throughout the region from A.D. 1150 to 1200, residents of the dwellings fell prey to attackers who killed and ate them, the- orizes anthropologist Brian R. Billman of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. At least a few hours later, one of the attackers must have defecated in the vic- tims’ fireplace, he contends.

“We see that as an act of contempt,” he says. “There was probably a brief out- break of cannibalism that was used as a political or military strategy at prehis- toric Anasazi sites.”

The new finds come from a site called Cowboy Wash in southwestern Colorado. The report by Billman and his colleagues appears in the Sept. 7 NATURE.

Reports of cannibalism at other Anasazi sites dating to between 800 and 1,600 years old have been controversial (SN: 1/2/93, p. 12), and the Cowboy Wash claim is no exception. Critics suspect that Billman’s group has mistaken a coy- ote coprolite for that of a person. Either warfare, reburial rituals, or the organized killing of people deemed to be witches- none of which included cannibalism- might have yielded the other signs of a p

Telescope unveils a stellar deception A heavenly masquerade may shed 5

light on the nature of astrophysical 5 jets-the beams of material spewed by .ia’ a wide variety of celestial objects. 3

Astronomers came upon the stellar puzzle while observing a dust-shroud- z ed body called Hen 2-90 with the Hub- ble Space Telescope. The object had been classified as the remains of a dy- ing, lightweight star. The new images r e veal, however, that the object exhibits behavior unlike that of any corpse. Hen 2-90 has a pair of oppositely directed jets that spout clumps of gas.

Newborn stars possess jets, but Hen 2-90 is too hot and luminous to qualify as a youngster, notes Raghvendra Sahai of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Instead, he and Lars- h e Nyman of the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile, and the Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden propose that the body consists of two aging stars hidden behind a lane of dust.

One member of the unseen duo may be an elderly, bloated star known as a red giant. The outer layers of such a star are easily captured by the tug of a companion star. The gas then forms a swirling disk around the companion. This second star is likely to be a re- cently formed white dwarf, the com- pact remnant of a sunlike star, Sahai and Nyman suggest in the Aug. 1 A S T R ~ PHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS.

The jets may derive from gas piling onto the disk and creating periodic in- stabilities, the researchers suggest. Other systems also produce jets when

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Top: Image of Hen 2-90, some 8,OOO light- years away, shows pair of directed jets. X-shaped streaks are artifacts. Bottom: The object5 disk (arrow), seen e@e on.

one star rips matter from another. Sahai says that other Hubble images

showing a dark disk around Hen 2-90 lend credence to his team’s hypothesis. This lopsided disk is too large to be the swirling gas around just the white dwarf, but it indicates that material surround- ing Hen 2-90 doesn’t have a spherical distribution. That’s what astronomers would expect if one star were dumping matter onto a companion.

Spectra of Hen 2-90 could reveal the chemistry of the hidden duo, Sahai adds.

“This is one of the most beautiful, best behaved, and most collimated bipolar jets ejected by a stellar source of any sort,” comments John F. Bally of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Noting that jets are common in objects ranging from newborn stars to galactic cores, the new find “may well prove to be a Rosetta stone for understanding the launch and collimation of stellar jets,” he says. -R. Cowen

SCIENCE NEWS, VOL. 158

parent cannibalism reported at Cowboy Wash, they argue.

The new evidence confirms that canni- balism occurred at the Anasazi site, Bill- man responds. His group recovered the remains of seven people of both sexes and various ages on the floors of two pit houses. The bones exhibit incisions typi- cal of butchery and have polished ends produced by cooking in pots, the re- searchers say.

Household items and other material in the structures indicate that the homes were suddenly abandoned, they add.

Chemical analyses of pieces of a cook- ing pot, directed by biochemist Richard A. Marlar of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, detected the residue of human myoglobin. Occur- ring solely in muscle, this protein indi- cates that human tissue was cooked in the pot, the scientists contend.

Further tests failed to find human my@ globin in storage vessels at Cowboy Wash or in cooking pots from several Anasazi sites occupied before A.D. 1150.

The coprolite, found in the ashes of a hearth, is shaped like that of a human, Billman holds. Also, it contains human myoglobin but no signs of canine origin, such as dog hairs or fragments of chewed bones. Surprisingly, no plant re- mains were detected.

Coprolites previously recovered from a latrine area at another Anasazi site, as well as samples of modern human feces, bore no traces of human myoglobin.

Cowboy Wash consists of nine sites, each with one to three pit houses. All four sites excavated so far contain butchered human skeletons, Billman says. He estimates that at least 35 people were killed and eaten in the same attack.

Severe drought and political upheaval in the region may have temporarily sparked cannibalistic practices, Billman proposes. For about 50 years, such forces overrode a strict Anasazi taboo against cannibalism, he adds.

In a commentary in the same journal, physiologist Jared M. Diamond of the University of California Medical School in Los Angeles calls the new report “com- pelling evidence” of cannibalism in the prehistoric U S . Southwest.

Peter Y. Bullock, an archaeologist at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, disagrees, however. Coyotes are com- mon scavengers in this part of the coun- try and could easily have deposited the Cowboy Wash coprolite, Bullock asserts.

Further Cowboy Wash excavations may yield more data, but neither Billman nor Bullock expects them to resolve the cannibalism debate. -B. Bower

SEPTEMBER 9,2000